GV-R687SO-1GD and BF3

[TechWarrior]

Gigabyte X58A-UD3R (REV 1.6)
GV-R687SO-1GD Gigabyte VGA AMD Radeon PCIE 2.0 HD6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit Super Overclock Series * 2 (crossfire)
ANTEC Gamer 1000 watt PSU
3*4GB Kingston ValueRAM 1333

The problems started with BF3. This game takes the maximum out of the Graphic cards. Client crashed after 5 minutes (black screen) even when we only activated one graphic card. When i checked the logs it referred to the graphic card. We installed gigabytes overclock software. Then i reduced the speed to the non overclocked version and only activated one graphic card.
Temperature came close to 90 degrees celcius, but it kept going without crashing. The fan was turning on maximum. So we had definately a heating problem when overclocked.
There is no new bios still out and in my opinion with the fans turning on maximum there is very little over what we can do or a bios upgrade can do. Let alone run 2 cards in crossfire which will heat up even more. The motherboard also does not help as the cards are very close to eachother, something which on the current motherboards is not a big problem anymore, since the space is made wider. So currently we can not run one let alone run two graphic cards overclocked as sold by Gigabyte.
Older games are not an issue. BFBC2 runs smoothely with both cards overclocked and running on full settings 1920*1200.

On a sidenote we had to change the memory voltage settings to 1.6 instead of the 1.5 that is standing in the bios. This helped with a blue screen problem.

I will contact Gigabyte support to see what they can do to solve this hardware issue.

[TechWarrior]

On a sidenote. If you use the vga card not in crossfire, so it wont block most of the  income of fresh air. And  the settings in the game wont be set to ultra or very high. It is most unlikely you will encounter the same problem. Propably you will not even encounter this problem with the newer motherboards where the cards have more space (hopefully). Unless the overclocked version needs a higher voltage.

[Aussie Allan]

  overclocked version needs a higher voltage. .....this has come up several times in as many days with the on-line version of BF3

  It does not fix the problem every time but is generally the first port of call.

  Aussie Allan

[Baron]

I CF a pair of HD6870OC cards, and BF3 runs just fine for me.........half the problems with BF3 seems to me is that Origin software and the Battlefield web browser to launch the game.